How Can We Tell Science from Religion?

Paper delivered at the Conference on
the Origin of Intelligent Life in the Universe,
Sponsored by the International School of Plasma Physics in Varenna,
Italy, July 28-31, 1998.

Introduction

I propose for consideration two models of the relation between
science and religion. In the first, materialist model, science
is seen as based upon philosophical materialism. For scientific
purposes, every event or phenomenon is conclusively presumed to
have a material cause, at least after the ultimate beginning.
Within this first model, to postulate a non-material cause "
such as an unevolved intelligence or vital force " for any
event is to enter the territory of religion. For materialists,
this is equivalent to departing from reality into fantasy.

The second, or testability model defines science strictly in
terms of accepted procedures for testing hypotheses, such as repeatable
experiments. Within the second model, whatever is testable is
eligible for consideration. Whether some phenomenon could have
been produced by unintelligent material causes, or whether an
intelligent cause must be postulated, is eligible for investigation
whether the phenomenon in question is a possible prehistoric artifact,
a radio signal from space, or a biological cell.

I will illustrate the difference by quoting the famous opening
verse of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word."
To a materialist that is mythology, and scientific nonsense. A
materialist might paraphrase or parody the opening verses of John
with this alternative:

In the beginning were the particles, And the particles formed
galaxies and planets, And on at least one planet the particles
became complex living stuff And the stuff imagined God, But eventually
discovered Evolution.

Which is correct the original verse or the parody? To a materialist, only the
parody deserves serious consideration. To one who adheres to the testability
model of science, either possibility is acceptable. In biology, one can test
the visible and measurable qualities of organisms to see if they are such that
unintelligent material processes could produce them. It is possible that organisms
contain some feature, such as extremely complex specified information, which
cannot plausibly be ascribed to unaided material causes alone. In that case
the real existence of a necessary intelligent cause must be taken seriously
as a candidate for further confirmation or falsification. For this purpose,
it does not matter whether the intelligence is thought to belong to God, or
to some alien race of intelligent beings, or to some entity we cannot yet imagine.

The difference between the two models becomes of practical
significance in light of recent works arguing that intelligent
causes may have been active in the history of life. Should a hypothesis
of intelligent design in biology be rejected a priori as inconsistent
with materialism, or should it be considered eligible for fair-minded
testing?

Science as Applied Materialist Philosophy

Richard Dawkins has expressed the scientific materialist outlook
on the "mind first" concept with his characteristic
pungency:

But of course any God capable of intelligently designing as
complex as the DNA/protein replicating machinery must have been
at least as complex and organized as that machine itself. Far
more so if we suppose him additionally capable of such advanced
functions as listening to prayers and forgiving sins. To explain
the origin of the DNA/protein machine by invoking a supernatural
Designer is to explain precisely nothing, for it leaves unexplained
the origin of the Designer. You have to say something like "God
was always there," and if you allow yourself that kind of
lazy way out, you might as well say that "DNA was always
there," or "Life was always there," and be done
with it. [Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, Longman, 1986,
p. 141.]

There is a lot of middle ground, however, between a statement
that "explains precisely nothing" and a statement that
does not explain everything. Admittedly, the naked statement that
"God created life" does not explain very much, but neither
does the naked statement that "life somehow evolved."
That is why the validity or invalidity of the neo-Darwinian mechanism
(or some precisely specified materialist alternative) is such
an important question for theology and philosophy, as well as
science. If I say that "the first life form was designed
by intelligence," my statement explains something, even if
I can say nothing about the identity of the designer or the means
by which the design was executed. What it explains (if it is true)
is that we are on the wrong road if we are seeking to discover
how life can be made without a designing intelligence. Detailed
truth builds upon basic truth. If we base our research on counterfactual
assumptions we are likely to be heading up a blind alley.

It is also illogical to reject a basic starting point simply
because it is a starting point, and therefore rests upon something
whose origin is unexplained. The nature of explanation is that
one thing is explained on the basis of something else which is
taken for granted, and the chain of explanation must either end
at some point or go around in an endless circle. A mind-first
approach starts with mind in existence, and a matter-first approach
starts with matter in existence. (This symmetry remains even when
materialists obscure it by invoking devices such as an eternal
cycle of evolving universes, or the replacement of "matter"
by fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, or equations employing imaginary
time that portray a universe without a beginning.) The advantage
of starting with matter is that matter seems simpler, even though
humans are no more able to make matter from nothing than mind
from nothing. Other things being equal, a simple starting point
is preferable to a complex one. This is the kernel of truth in
the paragraph by Dawkins previously quoted. But are the other
things equal? The advantage of starting with mind is that mind
has capacities which matter lacks, capacities which may be necessary
to explain the world. If there is convincing evidence that mindless
matter can produce life, and even mind, then the matter-first
position holds the advantage. But if matter lacks those capacities,
then it will be more productive of truth to start with mind. It
is not scientific to assume that matter has such capabilities
merely because that is what scientists would like to believe.

Dawkins is one of many scientists who hold that materialism
and science are effectively the same thing. Another fervent materialist,
Harvard University geneticist Richard Lewontin, has written that
the key to educating the public about science is not to emphasize
the teaching of particular facts and theories, but rather to teach
students to believe in materialism as a philosophy and in "Science,
as the only begetter of truth." In Lewontin's words, "We
exist as material beings in a material world, all of whose phenomena
are the consequences of material relations among material entities."
He even invokes another verse of John's Gospel in this connection,
proclaiming that materialism is "the truth that makes you
free." (It sets you free from priests and superstition.)
Lewontin is as skeptical as I am about much of what passes as
evolutionary theory, including the adaptationist theories of Richard
Dawkins, which he dismisses as "just-so stories." He
is also keenly aware that it is not only in disreputable fields
like astrology or the softer sciences that one may find biased
testing or inflated claims. Pseudoscience sometimes thrives in
prestigious universities and hospitals, with the support of powerful
government agencies. Why, then, should we trust science? Here
is Lewontin's answer:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity
of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill
many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite
of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated
just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment
to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of
science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of
the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced
by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus
of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material
explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying
to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for
we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.... To appeal to an
omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities
of nature may be ruptured, than miracles may happen.

[All quotes are from Lewontin, "Billions and Billions
of Demons," in the New York Review of Books, January
9, 1997.]

To say that the commitment to materialism is a priori
is to imply that science should stick to materialism even if scientific
testing does not support the claim that matter can create life
or mind. This degree of commitment is thought to be required because
the existence of a creating mind threatens the picture of a world
that is ruled only by law and chance. But the omnipotent deity
as law maker could be viewed as underwriting the natural laws
rather than threatening them, even if rare exceptions are allowed.
Once again, we seem to be encountering the "all or nothing"
fallacy that excludes the huge middle ground in between. Modern
legal systems authorize the President or Prime Minister to pardon
criminals, but this provision for discretionary exceptions does
not prevent a lawyer from telling a convicted narcotics dealer
approximately how long he can expect to spend in prison. (Scientific
predictions are also often approximate or statistical.) Medical
doctors occasionally encounter astonishing cures or remissions
that elude explanation. However they explain the anomalies, the
doctors rightly retain their trust in the efficacy of scientific
medicine for the great majority of cases.

The Divine Foot does not threaten a science that is content
to be one important road to truth, but it does threaten "Science
as the only begetter of truth." Is it really in the best
interest of science itself to claim the power to explain everything?
It is easy to see why ambitious scientists would be attracted
to a philosophy that maximizes the explanatory power of science,
but this very advantage creates a paradox. If science explains
literally everything in terms of physical causes, then it also
explains the scientific mind and its thoughts. If matter is ultimately
all there is, and if our brains are the product of mindless chemical
combinations, and if "the mind is merely what the brain does,"then
our thoughts and theories are products of mindless forces. This
disquieting point remains valid even if the relationship between
chemistry and thought is deemed to be complex, as in the "computational
theory of the mind." A computer may come up with some astonishing
answers, but it computes within the boundaries set by its designer.
The computer Deep Blue plays chess much better than its programmers
could, but it will never defy them and choose to write poetry
instead.

On materialist assumptions it is mysterious that we can reach
truth by scientific investigation, exploiting mental capacities
that would have been useless in the conditions in which they supposedly
evolved. One common materialist speculation is that the most advanced
human mental capacities are accidental products of a big brain
explosion that just happened to produce a great deal more capability
than primitive man could make use of at the time. I would say
that such an explanation explains precisely nothing, especially
when it comes from scientists who indignantly reject the idea
that brain size is a reliable measure of human intelligence today.
When we consider all the implications, scientists may have as
much reason as theologians to be suspicious of materialist reductionism
when it is applied to the mind.

Don't misunderstand me; I am no anti-rationalist. I am convinced
that we really do have the ability to reason from sound premises
to true conclusions, when our minds are operating as they should,
and that our best theories correspond at least approximately to
"the way things really are." The question is whether
the ability to theorize. which is different in kind from anything
in the animal world, can be explained from a materialist starting
point. Widespread ambivalence on this point helps to explain why
there is so much resistance, even among materialists, to extending
Darwinian explanations from the body (where they are dubious enough)
to the mind. The Pope wants the Darwinists to leave the mind to
the Church, and Stephen Jay Gould wants them to leave it to left-wing
politics. Richard Dawkins says that "we are survival machines
-- robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules
known as genes." (The Selfish Gene, Preface to 1976
edition) A little later he is fomenting robot rebellion: "Let
us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we
may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something
that no other species has ever aspired to." (The Selfish
Gene, 1989 edition, p. 3.) Dawkins ally Steven Pinker said
it most dramatically:

Well into my procreating years I am, so far, voluntarily childless,
having squandered my biological resources reading and writing,
doing research, helping out friends and students, and jogging
in circles, ignoring the solemn imperative to spread my genes.
By Darwinian standards I am a horrible mistake, a pathetic loser,
not one iota less than if I were a card-carrying member of Queer
Nation. But I am happy to be that way, and if my genes don't
like it, they can jump in the lake. (Steven Pinker, How the
Mind Works, Norton, 1997, p. 52.)

So it seems that we can rebel against our creator, eat the
forbidden fruit, and strike off on our own. Pinker, otherwise
a materialist of the purest water, introduces a different metaphysical
starting point by insisting upon that self-governing "I."
A consistent materialist knows that "I" is no more than
a place holder for the material causes that produce the experience
of subjectivity. But "I" wonder if there is such a thing
as a truly consistent materialist.

Despite these logical disadvantages, materialism as a definition
of science has some apparent advantages that ensure its continuing
popularity among scientists. An a priori adherence to materialism
allows scientists to assume certain things that they very much
wish to believe. They can assume, for example, that lifeless chemicals
are endowed with the power to combine spontaneously to produce
living organisms. This remarkable doctrine, decisively repudiated
by Pasteur in the 19th Century when it was called "spontaneous
generation," would be very difficult to prove, to put it
mildly. But it is easy to assume, and spontaneous generation must
have happened at least once if materialism is true. Thus Graham
Cairns-Smith, who has brilliantly debunked the reigning "RNA-first"
theory in origin of life studies, remains as convinced as Stanley
Miller himself that the solution to the problem lies with chemistry.
But is that conviction more than a leap of faith?

Similarly, try to present convincing evidence that the Darwinian
mutation/selection mechanism really does have the kind of creative
power needed to make complex organs like wings and eyes and brains
or even cells. By "convincing" evidence I mean evidence
which is convincing to someone who is inclined to doubt, not just
to those who are already convinced. Everybody with even a cursory
knowledge of the literature knows that the textbook examples (Kettlewell's
peppered moths, Grant's finch beaks) describe relatively trivial
changes that involve no innovation or increase in genetic information.
Debate this point (as I have) and you will find that most Darwinists
quickly retreat to the vague claim that "evolution has occurred."
But when materialism is assumed as the very basis of science,
they can re-emerge a few logical steps later in triumph. Something
had to guide evolution, to produce those wonders of apparent design,
and natural selection is just about the only materialist contender.

That is why we can have a Conference like this one, on the
origin of life no, make that the origin of intelligent life --
in the universe. Without the a priori starting point in materialism,
we might have to abandon the project on the ground that the available
data are not sufficient even for informed speculation. I am the
last person to want to spoil a party, particularly one as pleasant
as this one, but I will take the risk. Is there a better way to
define "science?"

The Challenge of Intelligent Design Theory

The challenge that materialist theories of evolution face today
can be summarized briefly. First, Richard Dawkins himself began
The Blind Watchmaker, his influential restatement of neo-Darwinism,
with the observation that "biology is the study of complicated
things that give the appearance of having been designed for a
purpose." Dawkins also agrees that living organisms contain
vast quantities of genetic information, far more than in a typical
computer program. In Dawkins' own words:

Physics books may be complicated, but ... the objects and
phenomena that a physics book describes are simpler than a single
cell in the body of its author. And the author consists of trillions
of those cells, many of them different from each other, organized
with intricate architecture and precision-engineering into a
working machine capable of writing a book.... Each nucleus...
contains a digitally coded database larger, in information content,
that all 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together.
And this figure is for each cell, not all the cells of the body
put together. (The Blind Watchmaker, pp. 2-3)

Complex specified information of this kind is something that,
in all ordinary human experience, is produced only by intelligence.
Moreover, the information is fundamentally distinct from the medium
in which it is inscribed, so that it cannot be explained or understood
solely in terms of physical or chemical laws. This is an aspect
of reality that we encounter every day in reading a book, or a
document on a computer screen.. The information is not a product,
"emergent" or otherwise, of the laws which govern the
combining of ink and paper. Something else in this case the mind
and meaning of the author has to be taken into account. Another
distinguished evolutionary biologist, George C. Williams, has
put the point eloquently:

Evolutionary biologists have failed to realize that they work
with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information
and that of matter.... These two domains can never be brought
together in any kind of the sense usually implied by the term
"reductionism." ...The gene is a package of information,
not an object. The pattern of base pairs in a DNA molecule specifies
the gene. But the DNA molecule is the medium, not the message.
Maintaining this distinction between the medium and the message
is absolutely indispensable to clarity of thought about evolution.

Putting these points together: we see that to account for life
(in this case, the cell), we have to explain not only the origin
of the chemicals but also the origin of the information. The neo-Darwinian
explanation is well-known. It assumes that a very simple replicating
organism started one way or another. Thereafter, the theory ascribes
the increases in information to random mutation, and insists that
the vast quantity of information can be provided by mutation in
very small doses, if each dose immediately adds to the ability
of the organism to survive and reproduce.

There are many excellent reasons for doubting the adequacy
of this kind of explanation. Random changes (such as copying errors
in the DNA) do not generate increases in information, whether
they are small or large. It is not necessarily easier to provide
the same amount of information in multitudinous small doses, rather
than a single large one. Each increment is less unlikely, but
the price one pays is that one has to have a great many increments,
each of which must supply the precise kind of new information
required. To illustrate the point with an analogy: It is hard
enough to earn one million dollars by winning the grand prize
in a lottery, but it is no easier to achieve that feat by winning
a $100 prize 10,000 times.

Even if mutation is capable of providing the increments in
genetic information, what we know of organisms does not support
the assumption that the complexity can be built up by individual
steps which are increasingly adaptive. This is the central point
of biochemist Michael Behe's book Darwin's Black Box, (Free
Press 1996), which has had a wide readership in the United States
and is being translated into many other languages. According to
Behe, Dawkins' blind watchmaker thesis is a relic of a nineteenth
century science which lacked the understanding of biological mechanisms
that recent advances in molecular biology have provided. The biologists
who established the still-dominant Darwinian orthodoxy thought
of the cell as an undifferentiated blob of "protoplasm."
The organism (and especially the cell) was to them a "black
box" -- a machine which does wonderful things by some mechanism
nobody knows. Behe explains that biochemists are now able to explore
part of the insides of that black box, and what they find inside
is "irreducible complexity." A system is irreducibly
complex if it is "composed of several well-matched, interacting
parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal
of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease
functioning." Life at the molecular level is replete with
such systems, and biologists for the most part do not even attempt
to explain how they could have come into existence by the Darwinian
mechanism. The few examples that are do try to meet the problem
are replete with hand-waving. Crucial components "appear"
or "arise" out of nowhere, as required.

That's enough for now. I don't need to make the entire case
for intelligent design, but merely to make the argument that there
is something here worth examining on a fair basis. I emphasize
that, although I am talking about a minority viewpoint I am not
relying on anything that can be dismissed as fringe science. Behe
is a research biochemist with impeccable qualifications. His scientific
descriptions are echoed by his materialist colleagues; it is only
the philosophy that causes disagreements. The more theoretical
aspects of intelligent design are discussed in (among many other
places) two books from Cambridge University Press from scientific
scholars with appropriate pedigrees. [Hubert Yockey, Information
Theory and Molecular Biology (Cambridge University Press 1992);
William Dembski, The Design Inference (Cambridge University
Press, 1998).

If living systems are composed of complex specified information,
and if information is fundamentally distinct from matter, and
if contemporary evolutionary science has failed to provide an
adequate information-generating mechanism, then it is reasonable
to conclude at least provisionally that the materialist cause
is flunking the test. The materialists have a right to reply,
of course, and they may win the argument in the end. But -- if
science is based on testability rather than on a priori adherence
to materialism -- they will need to respond with scientific evidence
that shows that natural selection (or some other specific mechanism)
can create as advertised.

I published a version of this argument in the October, 1996
issue of the journal Biology and Philosophy, mainly in
the hope that Dawkins and Williams would respond. They did respond
in the same issue. Along with the expected ad hominem arguments,
they both made the same substantive point, which is correct as
far as it goes. They said that the mere fact that information
and matter are separate kinds of entities does not mean that the
information has to be supplied by intelligence if the information
content is sufficiently low. As Williams put it:

Johnson's argument is based on some obvious fallacies, such
as information requiring an intelligent author. The pattern of
slow-moving waves in sand dunes records information about what
the wind has been doing lately. Their shadow pattern observed
late in the day is information about the structure of the dunes
and less directly about the wind. The only author recognizable
here is the wind. Similar patternings must arise in any complex
molecular, including the prebiotic. If one kind of molecular
pattern influences others in ways that increase the incidence
of that pattern, a hypercycle subject to natural selection has
arisen. That would be analogous to some pattern of dune shadows
making it more likely that the responsible winds would occur
more frequently. That the author of genetic information is as
stupid as the wind is apparent in the functionally stupid historical
constraints discussed in Chapter 6 of my 1992 book [citing apparently
suboptimal biological systems]. [George C. Williams, "Reply
to Johnson," in Biology and Philosophy (Vol. 11,
n. 4, October, 1996), p. 541. (Emphasis added).

I think Williams' argument misses the main point, but I do
like the way he defines the issue. Evolutionary biology has traditionally
asked the wrong questions, such as "do organisms vary?"
or Darwin's "are the species immutable?" Of course organisms
vary, and of course the species are not immutable. The more interesting
question is: "where does the genetic information come from?"
Some kinds of information can be produced by unintelligent causes;
other kinds can not. The kind of information recorded in sand
dunes illustrates the former; the kind of information recorded
in physics textbooks, and even more in the mind of the physicist,
represents the latter. Information theory is the branch of science
that explicates the difference, and the latest word on the subject
is to be found in William Dembski's book, The Design Inference.
There are speculative ideas, such as Eigen's hypercycles and the
Darwin/Dawkins blind watchmaker mechanism, that claim to bridge
the gap. The question is: are these mechanisms convincing when
you view them from a metaphysically neutral posture, or only when
you view them with an a priori commitment to materialism?

Conclusion

A quote from the late Carl Sagan captures the essential issue.
In a book published shortly before his death he said:

At the heart of science is an essential balance between two
seemingly contradictory attitudes -- an openness to new ideas,
no matter how bizarre or counterproductive, and the most ruthless
scrutiny of all ideas, old and new... Consider this claim: As
I walk along, time -- as measured by my wristwatch or my aging
process -- slows down.... Here's another: Matter and antimatter
are all the time, throughout the universe, being created from
nothing. Here's a third: once in a very great while, your car
will spontaneously ooze through the brick wall of your garage
and be found the next morning on the street. They're all absurd!
But the first is a statement of special relativity, and the other
two are consequences of quantum mechanics (vacuum fluctuations
and barrier tunneling, they're called). Like it or not, that's
the way the world is. If you insist it's ridiculous, you'll be
forever closed to some of the major findings on the rules that
govern the universe. Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science
as a Candle in the Dark, p. 306 (Random House 1995).

"Like it or not, that's the way the world is." Sagan
understood that prejudice of every kind is the ultimate enemy
of science, but he could not grasp the possibility that he might
be guilty of the fault he ascribed to others. He was incapable
of conceiving that his own faction might have so strong a wish
that materialism be true that they would be willing to set up
an a priori philosophical principle as their God, and exempt it
from the ruthless scrutiny that science otherwise requires.. (I
know this for a fact, because I tried without success to explain
the concept to Sagan in a long dinner conversation at Cornell
University hosted by our mutual friend William Provine. Sagan
didn't just disagree -- he couldn't grasp the concept.) If Sagan
could have removed the plank from his own eye, he would have seen
better to remove the splinter from his brother's eye.

True believers in the scientific method, among whom I count
myself, do not exempt ourselves from scientific standards. If
we prefer to believe in divine creation we recognize that the
facts may not support our preference, and if we prefer to believe
in materialism we do the same. That insistence on questioning
what we might want to believe, and applying the same critical
standards to ourselves that we recommend to others, is how I define
"science." How do you define it?